Where will Sheets wear No. 15 next season?

Former Brewers right-hander Ben Sheets returned to his Louisiana high school last week and saw his No. 15 uniform retired. Sheets intends to be wearing it again in 2010.

He missed all of 2009 after undergoing surgery in February to repair a torn flexor tendon in his right arm, but a member of Sheets’ camp said he is participating in a flat-ground throwing program and is planning to be “more than ready to go” when the 2010 season begins. If that is the case, Sheets could draw some serious action on this winter’s free-agent market.

But that wasn’t the focus last Friday night, when Sheets returned to St. Amant High School in a small town between Baton Rouge and New Orleans and became the school’s first baseball player honored with a retired number.

“It’s time,” said Walter Lemons, the Gators’ head baseball coach and whose tenure began in Sheets’ freshman year.

“I’ve been working on this for four or five years,” Lemons said. “We finally got it done. He’s well-deserving, and I wanted to make sure he was the first baseball number we retired. I wanted to make it special for him.”

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